Innocence
__________
personal work
__________
personal work
A bit more than a year ago I was sitting with a healer as she asked me 'Do you feel a lot of guilt?'. I was like 'Hmm, guilt? I don't know, I guess sometimes I feel guilty, when I don't do what I think I'm supposed to...'. I didn't think it played an important part in my life.
But still, the question sparked reflection and what I found over the next months is that actually I'm basically drenched in guilt. That so many of my actions and feelings everyday have their roots in a sense of guilt and unworthiness. Do fish know that they swim in water? Are most people a lot of the time marinating in guilt and shame without even noticing? Is it a Christian thing? I don't know. Did you ever notice that about yourself? Don't tell me I'm the only one.
Well, as I became more and more aware of it I noticed that same energy around most of the people I know. We apologize all the time, for things that are not our fault. We make ourselves smaller than we are. We hate ourselves when we feel down. We seem to need to prove our worth and our okayness and our innocence constantly, over and over.
To me it seems so prevalent and all pervading.
As I kept playing with that concept and observing myself and my surroundings I also became interested in innocence. What does that even mean? Innocence. Little kids and baby bunnies are innocent, right?
Usually when I can't quite grasp something, I love journeying into the shamanic realm to ask the ones residing their for answers. What I find then is often unexpected and nothing that I could ever get to through thinking my way there.
What I found is that innocence is something extremely powerful. It's like, when our energy is not bound by guilt and shame but when we feel utterly innocent we are very very powerful. Suddenly all these options to act and be become apparent that we couldn't see before. Colors become brighter. We feel embedded in our surroundings, connected with everything. It's like guilt and that sense of wrongness build an invisible wall between ourselves and the world, but as soon as we connect with our innocence that wall disappears.
What I also learned through shamanic journeying is that power is not what it looks like in our world. What we often think of as power, is fear and insecurity and then violence born from that. Real power is what makes flowers bloom. What makes trees grow. Real power is when 'we' step aside and let life move through us and move us. And the life energy that then makes decisions for us, that then makes us act, that is inherently innocent.
